I sat down with Barry, who is a lawyer with experience in securities law, to get an insightful take on the SEC’s case against Goldman Sachs (GS):

Damien Hoffman: Barry, what annoys you most regarding the media’s commentary on the Goldman case?

Barry: The rule on securities fraud and misrepresentation is straight forward. You cannot make material misrepresentations when selling a security. You can’t say black when it’s white. You can’t say up when it’s down. John Paulson can’t say he’s long 200 million when he’s short 200 million. You just can’t and yet that’s what was done.

It doesn’t matter if Goldman lost money. So what? You can lose money. If I rear-ended a guy with my car and banged up my fender, I lose money. It has nothing to do with fault or guilt. State of mind on all that other stuff is irrelevant. The question is whether Goldman is guilty of committing some form of violation of these rules. It’s either yes or no. It’s amazing people get it so very wrong.”